DRC2017 Follow-Up: Developer Relations at VMware

At last week’s 13th Annual Evans Data Developer Relations Conference in Palo Alto, CA, our very own Larry McDonough (Director, Product Management, Ecosystem Tools) got to talk about VMware’s ongoing efforts to build a developer relations program that can meet its various stakeholders’ needs:

Larry McDonough, VMware – Director Product Management, Ecosystem ServicesDevRel Judo: Leveraging your company’s organizational structure to build a stronger Developer Relations team
Developer Relations is traditionally a centralized function, but what if you don’t have a dedicated DevRel team? Can a decentralized DevRel team succeed? This presentation will highlight the dynamic and sometimes rocky journey that VMware has travelled regarding Developer Relations and the pros and cons of a decentralized structure. I’ll talk about identifying and understanding developer personas, sharing standard developer relations functions across business units, managing resources and clarifying responsibilities, the importance of relationships with the product teams, and of course, constructing analytics to measure shared progress and success. The purpose is to help you strengthen your devrel teams by exploring your own company’s structure, it’s impact on your success and how you can leverage it’s strengths to improve developer outreach.